Roots I Placed on the Iceliner
(1991–Present)
I’ve told my life story to most people who know me. I tend to ramble, and I’ve lived enough for three lifetimes, so it’s hard not to. For those who don’t know me, I want to say this upfront: some parts of my story may be triggering, especially references to SA. I am a U.S. Army Desert Storm veteran with PTSD due to MST (Military Sexual Trauma). I talk about it more in my book, A Light for Dark Places, which will be the first tier of my Kickstarter. I’m revising it now, and anyone who pledges will receive the updated version when it’s published.
I also carried trauma long before I ever put on a uniform—things I didn’t recognize as trauma until much later. I’ve moved 55 times in my life. I’m 61 now. My age finally surpassed my number of moves. With every move, something was always lost, broken, or left behind. I call that place “the land of lost things.” Every move created trauma I didn’t have words for at the time.
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1991: The Year That Disappeared
By 1991, I was stationed at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, TX. No one from my section was supposed to deploy to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. But we had Army Reserve personnel attached to us, and one of them tried to be noble and volunteered. He turned out to be non‑deployable, but his attempt opened a slot that had to be filled.
Since I had been there the longest, they chose me.
I was told late on a Thursday that my flight left Monday.
Friday became a blur of POM (Preparation for Overseas Movement). No one had prepped because no one was supposed to go. I had an entire household that needed to be packed and stored. I called my ex‑husband and had him fly in from California. My niece donated her frequent flyer miles so he could get there. I gave him temporary power of attorney so he could be there when the movers came. That’s a lot of trust to place in an ex‑husband.
I spent the entire day running from place to place—paperwork, vaccinations, logistics. I had to figure out how to store my vehicle and pay my bills even though I had no idea how long it would take to get an address. I didn’t even have a unit assignment; they were just going to place me when I arrived. The kicker is that no one knew I was arriving, so they didn’t have a place picked out for me at all.
I called my sister in Tucson and asked her to basically become me until I got back. She took my car home and paid all my bills while I was deployed. It wasn’t easy for her. For the first three months I was there, I got “no pay due” because the Army didn’t know where I was. Logistics never entered me into their system. They could have declared me AWOL.
I saw some things.
That’s where I was assaulted.
I was there from the end of January to the beginning of June 1991.
When I returned, I married my best friend. He was then sent to Saudi Arabia as a permanent duty station, so I volunteered to go back to be with him. That was July 1991. Different city, same country. Same sand. We returned home in December.
I can basically wipe 1991 from existence.
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Kansas, Cats, and the Curse of Last Names
After Saudi, we landed in Kansas. My best‑friend‑husband turned out to be a better friend than husband, so we divorced. But he introduced me to husband number three, so I can’t complain.
I always said I’d be the one to break the family curse of divorce, but alas—divorce number two. Thankfully, marriage number three has lasted 34 years. We married November 6, 1992. Scott had gotten out of the Army in 1991, so he understood military life well—only now as a spouse. That created its own issues at medical appointments. They’d enter his name and the system would pull up my record: Sgt Millar.
Names were a whole saga.
• My maiden name was Shimp.
• Marriage #1: Davis. Shimp erased in pencil, but the shadow remained.
• Divorce: back to Shimp—rewritten over the faint outline of Davis.
• Marriage #2: Corley. Shimp crossed out, Corley written in.
• Divorce: back to Shimp again—original Shimp circled with a line through it.
Some of this mess was pencil. Some was pen. All of it was identity.
At one point, my second husband and I worked in the same department. My Chief chewed me out for missing training. I said I didn’t know about it. He said, “I told Sgt Corley.”
I said, “I AM Sgt Corley, and you didn’t tell me!”
When I married Scott, I kept my maiden name for paperwork sanity. After I got out of the Army, we moved to Wisconsin. At the DMV, I asked if I could use my married name. The clerk said, “You can be Mickey Mouse if you want to be.” Since I didn’t want to be Mickey Mouse, I hyphenated my last name to Shimp‑Millar. I honestly don’t remember doing it, but it came back to haunt me when we moved back to Wisconsin in 2026.
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The Moves Continue
After leaving the Army in 1994, Scott and I moved to Madison, WI. Between 1994 and 2004, we moved again and again:
• Madison → Evansville (short sale)
• Evansville → Cambridge
• Cambridge → Madison
• Madison → Janesville (another short sale, and we had to leave behind our koi pond)
My medical issues from the military worsened, and I had to quit working in 2001. Scott’s mom passed away in 2003. For my peace of mind, and to try to regain some sense of order, we bought a house on land contract in Timberon, NM. We moved there in 2004. My mom passed away in 2005.
These were all traumas, of course. Yet again, I didn’t recognize them as such.
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Scott’s Calling and the Firestorm
One night, Scott pointed at the TV—an officer leading troops on patrol in Afghanistan—and said, “THAT’S what I should be doing.”
In 2010, at age 45, he reenlisted. He had been a Sergeant E‑5 and a nurse. He lost a stripe and became a Specialist E‑4. They put him in “needs of the Army”: Infantry. At 45.
He was supposed to get Ft. Carson, CO, but stress fractures in both hips closed that slot. So he was stationed—of course—back at Ft. Riley, KS. I had joked that if he ever got stationed at Ft. Riley, I wouldn’t go with him. Naturally, I did. Another move.
He deployed to Afghanistan.
We lost the house in New Mexico.
We lost much of our belongings because I was only given three days to get my things. The person who held our land contract evicted us. I later learned I should have had 30 days, but too little too late.
In 2016, Timberon suffered a firestorm. That house burned down. We count ourselves lucky—we had already lost most of our belongings, but at least we weren’t living there when the fire hit. My neighbor said she saw flames shooting off the top of our house, and it gave her just enough time to escape with her dog, her mom, and her purse. Everything else was gone.
Now, when I talk about it, it’s easier to say, “I lost things in that fire.” It helps me process it. But there are still moments when I look for something I know I had—only to remember it’s in the land of lost things.
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The Stupa: The Stillness I Once Touched
Somewhere in the middle of all this, Scott and I visited the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya in Red Feather Lakes, CO. If you’ve ever been inside a Stupa, you know the feeling: the towering Buddha statue, the massive bell that vibrates through your bones, the polished hardwood floors, the zafus and zabutons arranged like an invitation to breathe.
Time moves differently in a place like that.
Even my tinnitus went quiet.
I’ve been a Buddhist since 1989. I know how to meditate. I know what mindfulness actually is. I know what it means to “sit with it” because I have literally sat with it—in a sacred space where silence is a living thing.
And that’s why the “acceptance” part of ACT irritates me so much. Therapists toss out “just sit with it” like it’s a switch you flip. But if I can’t recreate that level of stillness in everyday life—and Scott can’t either—and we know how… how can anyone expect trauma to yield to a slogan?
You don’t sit with trauma in a storm.
You sit with it in a sanctuary.
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And Back to the Timeline
I got out of the Army in 1994.
The moves continued.
The losses continued.
The rebuilding continued.
But so did the roots I placed—on the Iceliner, in my sanctuary, in my creative world, and in the story I’m finally telling in full.